The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.

From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."

Thursday, June 13, 2013

Demand the PLO Ratify the Oslo Accords

by David Bedein

Recently,
US Secretary of State Kerry passionately called for the renewal of
talks with the PLO. Former President Bill Clinton, who hosted the
PLO-Israel ceremonies on the White House lawn twenty years ago, is en
route to Jerusalem for high profile lectures where he will call also
call for for renewal of negotiations. And Shimon Peres, Israel’s
president, who served as Israel’s foreign minister at the outset of
negotiations with the PLO two decades ago, is about to convene thousands
of dignitaries at a conference at the President’s mansion that will
call for jump starting negotiations with the PLO.

Veteran observers of Middle East politics may ask: what is there to negotiate about?Indeed, there is an item on the table that is hardly a minor detail: The Palestinian Liberation Organization did not ratify the Oslo Accords after Arafat and Abbas signed the agreement on the White House lawn.

On September 13, 1993, at the White House, Israeli Prime Minister
Yitzchak Rabin and Israeli Foreign Minister Simon Peres signed the
“Declaration of Principles” (the DOP) between Israel and the PLO
together with Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas of the PLO. The agreement,
which had been hammered out in Oslo, stipulated mutual recognition
between Israel and the PLO. It required the PLO to cease and desist from
terrorism, and for the PLO to nullify its covenant, which calls for
Israel’s destruction.

The Israeli Knesset ratified the accord by a vote of 61 to 50, with 9
abstentions, a week later. However, what received hardly any attention
was the fact that on October 6, 1993, the PLO executive did not ratify
the Oslo accord, for lack of a quorum.

Very few people know or remember that Pinchas Inbari, the only
Israeli correspondent covering the PLO in Tunis at the time, writing for
the Israeli left-wing Hebrew newspaper Al HaMishmar, broke the
story that Arafat announced in Tunis that he could not get a quorum of
the executive council of the PLO to ratify the Declaration of Principles
of the Oslo Accords. Al HaMishmar then ran a headline on
October 7, 1993 that reported that the PLO did not ratify the peace
accord that Arafat and Abbas had signed together with Peres and Rabin
only a few weeks before, with US and Russia as co-signers.

Carrying Al HaMishmar in my hand, I walked into the office
of the Israel Government Press Office director at the time, Mr. Ori
Dromi, and showed him the headline of PLO non-ratification of the Oslo
Accords. Dromi, an appointee of Prime Minister Rabin, made it clear that
from the point of view of the Israeli government, this meant that
Arafat signed the accord on his own, without the sanction of the PLO.

The rest of the Israeli media, however, did not report that the PLO
never ratified the accord, but the Israeli government acted as if the
PLO had done so.

Inbari was scheduled to appear on the popular morning KOL YISRAEL radio show when he got back from Tunis.

However, the Prime Minister’s office asked Kol Yisrael to cancel that appearance.

Instead, the Israeli government dispatched then deputy minister of
Foreign Affairs, Yossi Beilin, to fly to Tunis to thank Arafat for
facilitating the ratification of the Oslo Accords, which the PLO never
did.

Why is this important? According to the Israeli law, since the PLO
did not ratify the Oslo Accords, which renounce terrorism, the PLO and
Fatah were not stricken from Israeli law books as “a terrorist entity,” a
status that the PLO received on March 1, 1980. And if you check the law
books today, you will find that the PLO is still defined in Israeli law
as a terror entity, because the PLO never ratified the Oslo Accords.

The same goes for American law. In March 2002, the US government
designated the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades of Fatah as a terror
organization. That terror designation was never changed. Under US law,
any government that aids and abets an organization defined as a terror
organization will forfeit US foreign aid assistance. This should include
the de facto Palestinian government, the Palestinian Authority.

The other concrete commitment made by the PLO on the White House lawn
was that it would officially cancel the PLO Covenant, which calls for
Israel’s destruction.

On two occasions, the Palestinian National Council gathered to
discuss the PLO Covenant – on April 24, 1996 and on December 14, 1998.
On neither occasion did the PNC cancel the PLO Covenant.In other words, there is a real reason to renew negotiations with the PLO:

The first items on the agenda would be to ask that the PLO to finally
ratify the Declaration of Principles of non-violence and mutual
recognition, which constituted the essence of the Oslo Accords. The
other request would be to cancel the PLO Covenant, which calls for
Israel’s destruction.

Reasonable requests, no?

David BedeinSource: http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dbedein/demand-the-plo-ratify-the-oslo-accords/Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.